Chilly climate in Academe

The sacred groves of academe are notorious for regressive attitudes towards women. This is surprising since academics are assumed to be liberal, but companies point out that they can't afford to waste talent the way the academy does. Women are still under-represented at all levels, particularly at tenured full professor. Contents include General Academe; chilly cliimate in the Academic metrics: grants, publishing, teaching, tenure; why women choose to leave, and efforts to improve things including Good signs:and women presidents.

Good scientists can learn from the data:

"I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception. True, but now I understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance."--MIT President Charles Vest, introducing the MIT report

Why aren't women represented up the faculty ranks proportional to their representation in the PhD pool? Science magazine published an article in August 2005 asking this question. You can't get to that article for free, but others have commented, including

Where are they now? (PDF). from Science magazine. May need subscription. 17 years after starting their PhD at Yale, 2/3 of the students are not in academe. Men are more likely to have high-powered med school (academic) or supervisory (non-academic) jobs than women. (2008)

Interview
with Virginia Valian from the New York Times (registration may be required).
"[I]n academia...What seems to happen is that men and women start out on
roughly equal footing. They get almost the same salaries, and they begin at the same rank, assistant professor. But if you look several years down the line, the differences in their career paths become apparent. The men are earning more, and they are being promoted
at a faster rate than the women are. " Also, see this
review of
Valian's book Why so slow? which addresses why this happens.

From Inside Higher Ed, a Q and A with authors of a new collection on women in science issues called Why Aren't More Women in Science? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence.

Accomplished women: An article from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute bulletin, describing the by-now-familiar conflicts for women in academic science, including marginalization and exclusion from decision making.

Surviving and thriving in academia: a survival guide for women and minorities. This is a very thorough and practical guide to finding your way into academe; what you should do to survive there; and strategies to consider if things go against you. Although written for psychologists, this guide offers information
that spans all disciplines, in a straightforward tone that neither exaggerates the negatives
nor covers them up.

This article posits that there are fewer women in science because they got better jobs, and men can't figure out better options. "My personal explanation for men going into science is the following: 1. young men strive to achieve high status among their peer group 2. men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?.....A lot of men are irrational, romantic, stubborn, and unwilling to admit that they've made a big mistake."

Crashing the top, an article about women academics and the conflicts they still face, from Salon.

Yes, but what happens if you compare men and women directly? Some studies:

an article about the Swedish study
showing that women fellowship candidates had to have vastly better qualifications than men to get
the same score from reviewers. And if it happened in Sweden, it surely happens elsewhere. The original study is here

Along the same lines, here's a letter to
The Chronicle describing
an experiment by a neuroscientist, who sent identical CVs out for review with different names--Brian and Karen. She writes: "The results were chilling: BOTH male and female faculty were SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to indicate that they would hire the applicant when they had received Brian's vitae!.... With literally identical records, Brian sails through external reviewers without a problem but Karen needs further scrutiny." The data for this experiment are now published: Steinpreis et al. (1999) The impact of gender on the review of the curricula vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates: A National Empirical Study. Sex Roles: A Journal
of Research, 41, 509-528.

How babies alter careers, and push women off the tenure track. "It shows that so long as we continue to identify the ideal academic worker as someone who works full time, 60 hours a week for 40 years straight -- surprise! -- that will overwhelmingly be men."

The
glass ceiling, a column from The San Francisco Chronicle about the experience of women academics. "Academic departments tend to be a kind of gerontocracy, run by people who grew up when smart women became teachers or nurses. Their colleagues at other universities are also men; there is something just wrong about a woman sitting in a faculty discussion."

A story from Biomednet about
the recent EMBO meeting, "The Glass Ceiling
for Women in the Life Sciences," reports that only 12% of EMBO's
membership is female. Unfortunately, not many men went to the meeting.

Equal opportunity in
academia: myth or reality?, text of a talk by an American statistician in an Australian
math journal. A quote:
"[O]nce a woman enters the workplace, she soon
discovers that her male counterparts are moving ahead of her. She is making some progress, but much more slowly than for equivalent work from men. Furthemore, if and when she does move up the ladder, she continues to discover that the gap between her gains and rewards widens as her own accomplishments relative to those gains increases."

A review of a
book arguing that affirmative action has had little effect on faculty diversity.
From The Chronicle.

Gender bias in academia 1999
reports "Although the number of women granted PhD's and hired as professors rose
steadily in the past two decades.....[t]he ratio of tenured
male to tenured female professors has remained unchanged for twenty years."

Organizing women faculty.
"Organizing faculty is like herding cats.....It is a constant struggle to persuade women colleagues
that we need to work together if we want to change our institutions in any significant way."
Got THAT right.

Newsletter from the University of California System called WAGE (We Advocate Gender Equity) provides a digest of issues inside and outside the UC system.

Slow progress in academic medicine:

Sart with Hamel et al (2006), New Engl J Med 355;3 www.nejm.org july 20, 2006. Despite equal numbers at the student level, " ....women
who enter academic medicine have been less likely
than men to be promoted or to serve in leadership
positions. As of 2005, only 15 percent of full
professors and 11 percent of department chairs
were women. " And this extends to publications, where women are not represented in commentary or as senior authors as often as you mght expect.

Promoting the Career Development of Women in Academic Medicine
Ann B. Nattinger, Arch Intern Med 2007;167 323-324. Although children and families inevitably contribute, that's not all: Female and male faculty seem to have similar preparation for academic careers in terms of performance as medical students, residents, and fellows and with respect to research experience on entering an academic career. Therefore, preparation for an academic career is likely not a major cause of differences in productivity. But the available data suggest that the academic productivity of junior female faculty members is adversely and differentially affected by poorer initial recruitment packages, including items such as laboratory space, secretarial support, and start-up funds.

Women in Academic Medicine: New Insights, Same Sad News, a 1999
editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine about a
study that found women MDs have a higher probability of entering academic medicine than men, but a lower chance of advancing through the ranks to tenured full professor. The editor (Catherine de Angelis) goes on to say, "I believe mentors are more important than role models,
and I do not believe equal opportunity for women will ever be possible. I would settle for equity -- that is, freedom from bias or favoritism."

Gender
Differences in Research Productivity, from The Scientist. "In our research, we identified
three dimensions along which gender inequality contributes to the gap in productivity rates between
female and male scientists: personal characteristics, structural positions, and facilitating resources.
We documented, for example, that women are less likely to work in research universities, spend more
time in classroom teaching, and are less likely to secure research funding and research assistance
than men."

An article
from The Chronicle about settlement of a tenure case involving maternity leave.

Mommy Tracked How the tenure process discriminates against female professors. From Campus Progress.

Tenure case
gone bad due to sex discrimination? " Her
supporters believe she is an assertive, maybe even aggressive, female scientist
who is treated poorly because she doesn't act like some people think a woman should.
Critics see her as a researcher who simply couldn't get along with her students and
colleagues and is blaming her problems on discrimination. " What do you think?

Is there gender bias in student evaluations? from the ASCB Women in Cell Biology Newsletter. Both male and female professors are evaluated similarly as to competence, knowledge, organization, presentation, and enthusiasm. However, female professors must measure up to another standard—they are expected to be personable, approachable, warm, and nurturing. Interestingly, female faculty who do not fit these expectations are rated lower by both female and male students.

The
Chilly Climate, by Bernice Sandler, an essay on
how women students are treated differently, by men
and women faculty alike as well as by their fellow students.

Leaving

A disturbing trend is the number of women who choose to leave academics. Some of these opt out early, at the postdoc to professor transition. However, many women who have ostensibly "made it", who are tenured and respected, often without children or family conflicts, are also choosing to leave academe in their prime years.

Where have all the women faculty gone? addresses some of the reasons women don't pursue jobs in academe. Importantly, the author makes the point that loss of women from the pipeline isn't due solely to family commitments and long hours. "All the career alternatives that I have mentioned are demanding. Women are not choosing different careers based on the hours involved or the lack of intellectual challenge...... We're not talking about the type of work. We're talking about something social--the established culture, collegiality and mentoring relationships in the academic sciences."

Why do women leave the profession? Among other reasons: "....Senior faculty members are more likely to ...intervene helpfully in the early careers of men rather than women [and] men are more likely than women to be identified as rising stars and groomed for success".

Remembering Denice Denton

This page is sad to report the passing of Denice Denton, the Chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz. An engineer and the former Dean of Engineering at U-Washington, Denice was a passionate advocate for women in science, and for diversity in academe. I was fortunate to meet her in 2005 when she spoke at USC as part of our WISE program. We have lost a powerful voice and the circumstances of her death should cause all of us to reflect as well as mourn.

Report from Inside Higher Ed covers more of the conflict leading up to her death.

Another article from The Chronicle of Higher Ed discusses the firestorm that met her when she went to UCSC.

There are numerous reports in the media, but their links and access are variable. Try Google. Be warned: You may be shocked to find viciously anti-woman, anti-gay commentary on some of the blogs that discuss this sad event.

Postscript: In November 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Denton was on medical leave, and had been treated for severe depression including in-patient stay at a hospital until the day before her suicide. This compounds the tragedy. What sort of profession do we have?

Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute from U Wisconsin. Check this one out:
The Women In Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) is a centralized, visible administrative structure with a mission to address a number of impediments to women’s academic advancement. The center structure of WISELI allows the institute to bring the issues of women scientists and engineers from obscurity to visibility. It will provide an effective and legitimate means of networking women faculty across departments, decreasing isolation, advocating for and mentoring women faculty, and linking women postdoctoral fellows in predominantly male environments with a variety of women faculty.

Madame President: Why the new female president at Harvard is an exception to the rule. From Campus Progress

However, one concern is that these incredibly highly achieving women lead to unrealistic expectations about those at the level just below. As the saying goes, we know we've achieved equity not when the superstars make it, but when the average woman has the same chance of success as the average man.